What's for Lunch?

Whatever you are having for lunch today, we hope it will be safe, nutritious, and delicious. Innovative food safety testing solutions from QIAGEN are helping to ensure food is safe and verify ingredients.

One year on from the horsemeat scandal in Europe, when meat products labeled as beef were contaminated with horsemeat, consumers are still skeptical about the quality of their food. DNA tests carried out in 27 EU countries and recently announced by the European Commission found undeclared horsemeat in 4.66% of beef products.

In response to the breaking scandal in 2013, QIAGEN developed a sample-to-result test process in record time, helping to provide a solution to address Europe’s latest food crisis. Innovative, proprietary DNA sample technologies were combined with real-time PCR assay technologies to create a fast and reliable workflow that detects horsemeat in food in only 4 hours — reducing the time-to-result from 2 days. The new method detects even minute traces of horsemeat (<1%) in real time. It is standardized, fully automated and highly reliable – unlike traditional test procedures for DNA and protein, which are slow, error-prone and cumbersome.